Autumn Fest – A Great Success!!

Autumn Fest 2009, September 26 and 27th was a great success. We doubled our attendance on Saturday with a conservative estimate of 2000, and it sounded like vendors and guests were all very happy with the day.

We’ll post pictures of the events as they come in, so keep checking back. Thank you to Gary Noren and Ann Perzyck for the pictures featured here.

We would like to take this time to thank all of the volunteers who helped to create this year’s event and all of the helpers during the weekend. We couldn’t have done it without you – this was truly a community event!

Enjoy!

We had 5 music venues. I have a picture of two, but I hope to share pictures of the others as they come in.

Sandy Bishop does wonderful interactive children's music

Tribal Spirit of the Sun is always a musical and visual treat

We also had a drum circle where everyone was welcome to participate. Here is a picture of some young drummers….

We had 38 vendors offering information and natural products…

Randy Korb, and his frogs, are always popular. Randy introduced his new book "Blinky the Frog" at Autumn Fest.

One of the tents focused on water issues including Save Ivers Mountain that had a colorful booth….

We have about 14 published authors in the area surrounding St. Croix Falls (that I know of), and we were happy to have 5 of them at Autumn Fest…..

The entire Overlook was a buzz – in fact the whole downtown was! We had over 24 arts and craft vendors in the street and 38 vendors in the parking lot and grass…

We try and do a community art project with each Autumn Fest and this year we did a mosaic. Artist Cynthia Rintala created the image and helped the community to create a really beautiful mosaic. VISTA Katelin and her Mom, Barb were instrumental in the project. Hopefully someone out there has a picture of the finished mosaic?! Here’s a picture of it in the beginning stage….

Autumn Fest last year was a low waste event on Sunday. This year, with the help of volunteers, it was low waste both Saturday and Sunday. What does “low waste” mean? All food vendors served their food using compostable plates, cups, utinsels, and napkins. We had 5 recycling areas, and we’re pleased to report that we only had one bag of trash per area at the end of a two day festival! The compostables will be processed into compost – heck -maybe next year we can sell last years Autumn Fest waste as compost for your houseplants….

One of the most oft questions when it comes to Festivals is “how was the weather?” Well, were we lucky! Late afternoon Friday was wet as was the whole evening (we got kind of soaked putting up the last big tent). Saturday morning was very cloudy and somewhat foggy, but then the clouds burned off and we had a glorious Saturday.

Sunday beautiful with a breeze. Three hours after our chili contest wrapped up howling winds brought down our tents – Autumn Fest ended in the nick of time…..